Before you is another volume of historical novels translated into Russian for the first time by the famous French modern writer and scientist, winner of many prestigious literary prizes and awards, Georges Bordonov. The smoldering coals under the ashes of five centuries highlight one of the most terrible figures of the Hundred Years' War (1338–1452 gg.) between France and England. To contemporaries, that war seemed eternal. The hero of the novel, Gilles de Rais, was born in the sixty-eighth year of the war - an endless series of battles, civil strife, and robberies. At that time, France, “mired in chaos and sin,” was ruled by the mad King Charles VI and the libertine Queen Isabella. Gilles de Rais was burned at the stake twelve years before the end of this longest war in human history. The collapse of the country, the decline of morals... Everything most vicious that can be imagined in human nature was concentrated, as if in focus, in the soul of Gilles de Rais. Only for a short time does he become a hero, an associate of Joan of Arc, a victorious marshal of France. But the fire on which Jeanne died burned the brand of the beast on his heart. Gilles de Rais became an inhuman, a bloody child molester, a “bluebeard”, a character in countless memoirs, fairy tales, novels and stories. Gilles de Rais was excommunicated from the church for his crimes, his ashes were burned and scattered to the wind without a funeral prayer. But J. Bordonov called his novel “Requiem” (“Eternal”), this is the first word of the funeral mass: “Grant them eternal peace, Lord!” - which no one said over the sinner’s ashes. The writer became not Gilles de Rais' judge, but a confessor. Five centuries late...